This chapter is devoted to theories of temperament.
Temperament
is that aspect of our personalities that is genetically based, inborn,
there from birth or even before. That does not mean that a
temperament
theory says we don't also have aspects of our personality that are
learned!
They just have a focus on "nature," and leave "nurture" to other
theorists!

The issue of personality types, including temperament, is as old as
psychology. In fact, it is a good deal older. The ancient
Greeks,
to take the obvious example, had given it considerable thought, and
came
up with two dimensions of temperament, leading to four “types,” based
on
what kind of fluids (called humors) they had too much or too little
of.
This theory became popular during the middle ages.

The sanguine type is cheerful and optimistic, pleasant to be
with, comfortable with his or her work. According to the Greeks,
the sanguine type has a particularly abundant supply of blood (hence
the
name sanguine, from sanguis, Latin for blood) and so also is
characterized
by a healthful look, including rosy cheeks.

The choleric type is characterized by a quick, hot temper,
often
an aggressive nature. The name refers to bile (a chemical that is
excreted by the gall bladder to aid in digestion). Physical
features
of the choleric person include a yellowish complexion and tense
muscles.

Next, we have the phlegmatic temperament. These people
are characterized by their slowness, laziness, and dullness. The
name obviously comes from the word phlegm, which is the mucus we bring
up from our lungs when we have a cold or lung infection.
Physically,
these people are thought to be kind of cold, and shaking hands with one
is like shaking hands with a fish.

Finally, there’s the melancholy temperament. These
people
tend to be sad, even depressed, and take a pessimistic view of the
world.
The name has, of course, been adopted as a synonym for sadness, but
comes
from the Greek words for black bile. Now, since there is no such
thing, we don’t quite know what the ancient Greeks were referring
to.
But the melancholy person was thought to have too much of it!

These four types are actually the corners of two dissecting lines: temperature
and humidity. Sanguine people are warm and wet.
Choleric
people are warm and dry. Phlegmatic people are cool and
wet.
Melancholy people are cool and dry. There were even theories
suggesting
that different climates were related to different types, so that
Italians
(warm and moist) were sanguine, Arabs (warm and dry) were choleric,
Russians
(cool and dry) were melancholy, and Englishmen (cool and wet) were
phlegmatic!

What might surprise you is that this theory, based on so little, has
actually had an influence on several modern theorists. Adler, for
example, related these types to his four personalities. But, more
to the point, Ivan Pavlov, of classical conditioning fame, used the
humors
to describe his dogs’ personalities.

One of the things Pavlov tried with his dogs was conflicting
conditioning
-- ringing a bell that signaled food at the same time as another bell
that
signaled the end of the meal. Some dogs took it well, and
maintain
their cheerfulness. Some got angry and barked like crazy.
Some
just laid down and fell asleep. And some whimpered and whined and
seemed to have a nervous breakdown. I don’t need to tell you
which
dog is which temperament!

Pavlov believed that he could account for these personality types
with
two dimensions: On the one hand there is the overall level of
arousal
(called excitation) that the dogs’ brains had available. On the
other,
there was the ability the dogs’ brains had of changing their level of
arousal
-- i.e. the level of inhibition that their brains had available.
Lots of arousal, but good inhibition: sanguine. Lots of
arousal,
but poor inhibition: choleric. Not much arousal, plus good
inhibition: phlegmatic. Not much arousal, plus poor
inhibition:
melancholy. Arousal would be analogous to warmth, inhibition
analogous
to moisture! This became the inspiration for Hans Eysenck’s
theory.

Biography

Hans Eysenck was born in Germany on March 4, 1916. His parents
were actors who divorced when
he was only two, and so Hans was raised by his grandmother. He
left
there when he was 18 years old, when the Nazis came to power. As
an active Jewish sympathizer, his life was in danger.

In England, he continued his education, and received his Ph.D. in
Psychology
from the University of London in 1940. During World War II, he served
as
a psychologist at an emergency hospital, where he did research on the
reliability
of psychiatric diagnoses. The results led him to a life-long antagonism
to main-stream clinical psychology.

After the war, he taught at the University of London, as well as
serving
as the director of the psychology department of the Institute of
Psychiatry,
associated with Bethlehem Royal Hospital. He has written 75 books and
some
700 articles, making him one of the most prolific writers in
psychology.
Eysenck retired in 1983 and continued to write until his death on
September
4, 1997.

Theory

Eysenck’s theory is based primarily on physiology and
genetics.
Although he is a behaviorist who considers learned habits of great
importance,
he considers personality differences as growing out of our genetic
inheritance.
He is, therefore, primarily interested in what is usually called
temperament.

Eysenck is also primarily a research psychologist. His methods
involve a statistical technique called factor analysis. This
technique
extracts a number of “dimensions” from large masses of data. For
example, if you give long lists of adjectives to a large number of
people
for them to rate themselves on, you have prime raw material for factor
analysis.

Imagine, for example, a test that included words like “shy,”
“introverted,”
“outgoing,” “wild,” and so on. Obviously, shy people are likely to rate
themselves high on the first two words, and low on the second two.
Outgoing
people are likely to do the reverse. Factor analysis extracts
dimensions
-- factors -- such as shy-outgoing from the mass of information.
The researcher then examines the data and gives the factor a name such
as “introversion-extraversion.” There are other techniques that will
find
the “best fit” of the data to various possible dimension, and others
still
that will find “higher level” dimensions -- factors that organize the
factors,
like big headings organize little headings.

Eysenck's original research found two main dimensions of
temperament:
neuroticism and extraversion-introversion. Let’s look at each
one...

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is the name Eysenck gave to a dimension that ranges from
normal, fairly calm and collected people to one’s that tend to be quite
“nervous.” His research showed that these nervous people tended
to
suffer more frequently from a variety of “nervous disorders” we call
neuroses,
hence the name of the dimension. But understand that he was not saying
that people who score high on the neuroticism scale are necessarily
neurotics
-- only that they are more susceptible to neurotic problems.

Eysenck was convinced that, since everyone in his data-pool fit
somewhere
on this dimension of normality-to-neuroticism, this was a true
temperament,
i.e. that this was a genetically-based, physiologically-supported
dimension
of personality. He therefore went to the physiological research to find
possible explanations.

The most obvious place to look was at the sympathetic nervous
system.
This is a part of the autonomic nervous system that functions
separately
from the central nervous system and controls much of our emotional
responsiveness
to emergency situations. For example, when signals from the brain
tell it to do so, the sympathetic nervous systems instructs the liver
to
release sugar for energy, causes the digestive system to slow down,
opens
up the pupils, raises the hairs on your body (goosebumps), and tells
the
adrenal glands to release more adrenalin (epinephrine). The adrenalin
in
turn alters many of the body’s functions and prepares the muscles for
action.
The traditional way of describing the function of the sympathetic
nervous
system is to say that it prepares us for “fight or flight.”

Eysenck hypothesized that some people have a more responsive
sympathetic
nervous system than others. Some people remain very calm during
emergencies;
some people feel considerable fear or other emotions; and some are
terrified
by even very minor incidents. He suggested that this latter group
had a problem of sympathetic hyperactivity, which made them prime
candidates
for the various neurotic disorders.

Perhaps the most “archetypal” neurotic symptom is the panic
attack.
Eysenck explained panic attacks as something like the positive feedback
you get when you place a microphone too close to a speaker: The small
sounds
entering the mike get amplified and come out of the speaker, and go
into
the mike, get amplified again, and come out of the speaker again, and
so
on, round and round, until you get the famous squeal that we all loved
to produce when we were kids. (Lead guitarists like to do this too to
make
some of their long, wailing sounds.)

Well, the panic attack follows the same pattern: You are mildly
frightened
by something -- crossing a bridge, for example. This gets your
sympathetic
nervous system going. That makes you more nervous, and so more
susceptible
to stimulation, which gets your system even more in an uproar, which
makes
you more nervous and more susceptible.... You could say that the
neuroticistic person is responding more to his or her own panic than to
the original object of fear! As someone who has had panic
attacks,
I can vouch for Eysenck’s description -- although his explanation
remains
only a hypothesis.

Extraversion-introversion

His second dimension is extraversion-introversion. By this he means
something very similar to what Jung meant by the same terms, and
something
very similar to our common-sense understanding of them: Shy, quiet
people
“versus” out-going, even loud people. This dimension, too, is found in
everyone, but the physiological explanation is a bit more complex.

Eysenck hypothesized that extraversion-introversion is a matter of
the
balance of “inhibition” and “excitation” in the brain itself.
These
are ideas that Pavlov came up with to explain some of the differences
he
found in the reactions of his various dogs to stress. Excitation
is the brain waking itself up, getting into an alert, learning state. Inhibition
is the brain calming itself down, either in the usual sense of relaxing
and going to sleep, or in the sense of protecting itself in the case of
overwhelming stimulation.

Someone who is extraverted, he hypothesized, has good, strong
inhibition:
When confronted by traumatic stimulation -- such as a car crash -- the
extravert’s brain inhibits itself, which means that it becomes “numb,”
you might say, to the trauma, and therefore will remember very little
of
what happened. After the car crash, the extravert might feel as if he
had
“blanked out” during the event, and may ask others to fill them in on
what
happened. Because they don’t feel the full mental impact of the
crash,
they may be ready to go back to driving the very next day.

The introvert, on the other hand, has poor or weak inhibition: When
trauma, such as the car crash, hits them, their brains don’t protect
them
fast enough, don’t in any way shut down. Instead, they are highly
alert and learn well, and so remember everything that happened.
They
might even report that they saw the whole crash “in slow motion!”
They are very unlikely to want to drive anytime soon after the crash,
and
may even stop driving altogether.

Now, how does this lead to shyness or a love of parties? Well,
imagine the extravert and the introvert both getting drunk, taking off
their clothes, and dancing buck naked on a restaurant table. The next
morning,
the extravert will ask you what happened (and where are his clothes).
When
you tell him, he’ll laugh and start making arrangements to have another
party. The introvert, on the other hand, will remember every mortifying
moment of his humiliation, and may never come out of his room again.
(I’m
very introverted, and again I can vouch to a lot of this
experientially!
Perhaps some of you extraverts can tell me if he describes your
experiences
well, too -- assuming, of course, that you can remember you
experiences!)

One of the things that Eysenck discovered was that violent criminals
tend to be non-neuroticistic extraverts. This makes common sense, if
you
think about it: It is hard to imagine somebody who is painfully shy and
who remembers their experiences and learns from them holding up a
Seven-Eleven!
It is even harder to imagine someone given to panic attacks doing so.
But
please understand that there are many kinds of crime besides the
violent
kind that introverts and neurotics might engage in!

Neuroticism and extraversion-introversion

Another thing Eysenck looked into was the interaction of the two
dimensions
and what that might mean in regard to various psychological
problems.
He found, for example, that people with phobias and
obsessive-compulsive
disorder tended to be quite introverted, whereas people with conversion
disorders (e.g. hysterical paralysis) or dissociative disorders (e.g.
amnesia)
tended to be more extraverted.

Here’s his explanation: Highly neuroticistic people over-respond to
fearful stimuli; If they are introverts, they will learn to avoid the
situations
that cause panic very quickly and very thoroughly, even to the point of
becoming panicky at small symbols of those situations -- they will
develop
phobias. Other introverts will learn (quickly and thoroughly)
particular
behaviors that hold off their panic -- such as checking things many
times
over or washing their hands again and again.

Highly neuroticistic extraverts, on the other hand, are good at
ignoring
and forgetting the things that overwhelm them. They engage in the
classic defense mechanisms, such as denial and repression. They can
conveniently
forget a painful weekend, for example, or even “forget” their ability
to
feel and use their legs.

Psychoticism

Eysenck came to recognize that, although he was using large
populations
for his research, there were some populations he was not tapping. He
began
to take his studies into the mental institutions of England. When these
masses of data were factor analyzed, a third significant factor began
to
emerge, which he labeled psychoticism.

Like neuroticism, high psychoticism does not mean you are psychotic
or doomed to become so -- only that you exhibit some qualities commonly
found among psychotics, and that you may be more susceptible, given
certain
environments, to becoming psychotic.

As you might imagine, the kinds of qualities found in high
psychoticistic
people include a certain recklessness, a disregard for common sense or
conventions, and a degree of inappropriate emotional expression. It is
the dimension that separates those people who end up institutions from
the rest of humanity!

Hans Eysenck was an iconoclast -- someone who enjoyed attacking
established
opinion. He was an early and vigorous critic of the effectiveness
of psychotherapy, especially the Freudian variety. He also
criticized
the scientific nature of much of the academic varieties of
psychology.
As a hard-core behaviorist, he felt that only the scientific method (as
he understood it) could give us an accurate understanding of human
beings.
As a statistician, he felt that mathematical methods were
essential.
As a physiologically-oriented psychologist, he felt that physiological
explanations were the only valid ones.

Of course, we can argue with him on all these points:
Phenomenology
and other qualitative methods are also considered scientific by
many.
Some things are not so easily reduced to numbers, and factor analysis
in
particular is a technique not all statisticians approve of. And
it
is certainly debatable that all things must have a physiological
explanation
-- even B. F. Skinner, the arch-behaviorist, thought more in terms of
conditioning
-- a psychological process -- than in terms of physiology.

And yet, his descriptions of various types of people, and of how
they
can be understood physically, ring particularly true. And most
parents,
teachers, and child psychologists will more than support the idea that
kids have built-in differences in their personalities that begin at
birth
(and even before), and which no amount of re-education will
touch.
Although I personally am not a behaviorist, dislike statistics, and am
more culturally oriented that biologically, I agree with the basics of
Eysenck’s theory. You, of course, have to make up your own mind!

References

It's hard to pick out just a few of Eysenck's books -- there are so
many! "The" text on his theory is probably The Biological
Basis
of Personality (1967), but it is a bit hard. The more "pop" book is
Psychology
is about People (1972). If you are interested in psychoticism, try
Psychoticism
as a Dimension of Personality (1976). And if you want to
understand
his view of criminality, see Crime and Personality (1964). His
unusual,
but interesting, theory about personality and cancer and heart disease
-- he thinks personality is more significant than smoking, for example!
-- is summarized in Psychology Today (December, 1989).

OTHER TEMPERAMENT
THEORIES

There have been literally dozens of other attempts at discovering
the
basic human temperaments. Here are a few of the better known
theories.

Your body and your personality

In the 1950’s, William Sheldon (b. 1899) became
interested
in the variety of human bodies. He built upon earlier work done
by
Ernst Kretschmer in the 1930's. Kretschmer believed that
there
was a relationship between three different physical types and certain
psychological
disorders. Specifically, he believed that the short, round pyknic
type was more prone to cyclothymic or bipolar disorders, and that the
tall
thin asthenic type (a too a lesser degree the muscular athletic
thype) was more prone to schizophrenia. His research, although
involving
thousands of institutionalized patients, was suspect because he failed
to control for age and the schizophrenics were considerably younger
than
the bipolar patients, and so more likely to be thinner.

Sheldon developed a precise measurement system that summarized body
shapes with three numbers. These numbers referred to how closely
you matched three “types:”

1. Ectomorphs: Slender, often tall, people, with
long arms and legs and fine features.

2. Mesomorphs: Stockier people, with broad
shoulders
and good musculature.

3. Endomorphs: Chubby people, tending to
“pear-shaped.”

Noting that these three “types” have some pretty strong
stereotypical
personalities
associated with them, he decided to test the idea. He came up
with another three numbers, this time referring how closely you match
three
personality “types:”

He theorized that the connection between the three physical types
and
the three personality types was embryonic development. In the
early
stages of our prenatal development, we are composed of three layers or
“skins:” the ectoderm or outer layer, which develops into skin
and
nervous system; the mesoderm or middle layer, which develops into
muscle;
and the endoderm or inner layer, which develops into the viscera.

Some embryos show stronger development in one layer or
another.
He suggested that those who show strong ectoderm development would
become
ectomorphs, with more skin surface and stronger neural development
(including
the brain -- hence cerebrotonic!). Those with strong mesoderm
development
would become mesomorphs, with lots of muscle (or body -- hence
somatotonic!).
And those with strong endomorph development would become endomorphs,
with
well developed viscera and a strong attraction to food (hence
viscerotonic!)
And his measurements backed him up.

Now at several points above, I used “types” with quotes. This
is an important point: He sees these two sets of three numbers as
dimensions or traits, not as types (“pigeon-holes”) at all. In
other
words, we are all more-or-less ecto-, meso-, AND endomorphs, as well as
more-or-less cerebro-, somato-, AND viscerotonic!

Thirty-five Factors

Raymond Cattell (b. 1905) is another prolific
theorist-researcher
like Eysenck who has made extensive use of the factor-analysis method,
although a slightly different version. In his early research, he
isolated 16 personality factors, which he composed into a test called,
of course, the 16PF!

Later research added seven more factors to the list. Even
later
research added twelve “pathological” factors found using items from the
MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory).

A “second order” factor analysis on the total of 35 factors revealed
eight “deeper” factors, as follows, in order of strength:

QI. Exvia (Extraversion)

QII. Anxiety (Neuroticism)

QIII. Corteria ("cortical alertness," practical and
realistic)

QIV. Independence (strong loner types)

QV. Discreetness (socially shrewd types)

QVI. Subjectivity (distant and out-of-it)

QVII. Intelligence (IQ!)

QVIII. Good Upbringing (stable, docile, the salt of
the
earth)

Baby Twins

Arnold Buss (b. 1924) and Robert Plomin (b. 1948),
both
working at the University of Colorado at the time, took a different
approach:
If some aspect of our behavior or personality is supposed to have a
genetic,
inborn basis, we should find it more clearly in infants than in adults.

So Buss and Plomin decided to study infants. Plus, since
identical
twins have the same genetic inheritance, we should see them sharing any
genetically based aspects of personality. If we compare identical
twins with fraternal twins (who are simply brothers or sisters,
genetically
speaking), we can pick out things that are more likely genetic from
things
that are more likely due to the learning babies do in their first few
months.

Buss and Plomin asked mothers of twin babies to fill out
questionnaires
about their babies’ behavior and personality. Some babies were
identical
and others fraternal. Using statistical techniques similar to
factor
analysis, they separated out which descriptions were more likely
genetic
from which were more likely learned. They found four dimensions
of
temperament:

1. Emotionality-impassiveness: How emotional and
excitable were the babies? Some were given to emotional outbursts
of distress, fear, and anger -- others were not. This was their
strongest
temperament dimension.

2. Sociability-detachment: How much did
the
babies enjoy, or avoid, contact and interaction with people. Some
babies are “people people,” others are “loners.”

3. Activity-lethargy: How vigorous, how active,
how
energetic were the babies? Just like adults, some babies are
always
on the move, fidgety, busy -- and some are not.

4. Impulsivity-deliberateness: How quickly did
the
babies “change gears,” move from one interest to another? Some
people
quickly act upon their urges, others are more careful and deliberate.

The last one is the weakest of the four, and in the original
research
showed up only in boys. That doesn’t mean girls can’t be
impulsive
or deliberate -- only that they seemed to learn their style, while boys
seem to come one way or the other straight from the womb. But
their
later research found the dimension in girls as well, just not quite so
strongly. It is interesting that impulse problem such as
hyperactivity
and attention deficit are more common among boys than girls, as if to
show
that, while girls can be taught to sit still and pay attention, some
boys
cannot.

The Magic Number

In the last couple of decades, an increasing number of theorists and
researchers have come to the conclusion that five is the “magic number”
for temperament dimensions. The first version, called The Big
Five, was introduced in 1963 by Warren Norman. It was
a fresh reworking of an Air Force technical report by E. C. Tuppes
and R. E. Christal, who in turn had done a re-evaluation of
Cattell’s
original 16 Personality Factors research.

But it wasn’t until R. R. McCrae and P. T. Costa, Jr.,
presented their version, called The Five Factor Theory, in
1990,
that the idea realy took hold of the individual differences research
community.
When they introduced the NEO Personality Inventory, many people
felt, and continue to feel, that we’d finally hit the motherload!

Here are the five factors, and some defining adjectives:

1. Extraversion

adventurous
assertive
frank
sociable
talkative

vs. Introversion

quiet
reserved
shy
unsociable

2. Agreeableness

altruistic
gentle
kind
sympathetic
warm

3. Conscientiousness

competent
dutiful
orderly
responsible
thorough

4. Emotional Stability (Norman)

calm
relaxed
stable

vs. Neuroticism (Costa and McCrae)

angry
anxious
depressed

5. Culture (Norman) or Openness to Experience
(Costa
and McCrae)

cultured
esthetic
imaginative
intellectual
open

The Big Five have also been shown to have a considerable genetic
component via twin studies:

Albert Mehrabian has a three-dimensional temperament model
that
has been well received. It is based on his three-dimensional
model
of emotions. he theorizes that you can describe just about any
emotion
with these three dimensions: pleasure-displeasure (P), arousal-nonarousal
(A), and dominance-submissiveness (D).

He reasons that, while we all vary from situation to situation and
time
to time on these three emotional dimensions, some of us are more likely
to respond one way or another -- i.e. we have a temperamental
disposition
to certain emotional responses. He uses the same PAD initials for
the temperaments: Trait Pleasure-Displeasure, Trait
Arousability,
and Trait Dominance-Submisiveness.

“P” means that, overall, you experience more pleasure than
displeasure.
It relates positively to extraversion, affiliation, nurturance,
empathy,
and achievement, and negatively to neuroticism, hostility, and
depression.

“D” means that you feel in control over your life. It relates
positively to extraversion, assertiveness, competitiveness,
affiliation,
social skills, and nurturance, and negatively to neuroticism, tension,
anxiety, introversion, conformity, and depression.

Parallels

Although you may feel a bit overwhelmed with all the various
theories,
personality theorists in fact are more encouraged than
discouraged:
It is fascinating to us that all these different theorists, often
coming
from very different directions, still manage to come up with very
parallel
sets of temperament dimensions!

First, every theorist puts Extraversion-Introversion and
Neuroticism/
Emotional Stability/ Anxiety into their lists. Few personologists
have any doubts about these!

Eysenck adds Psychoticism, which some of his followers are
re-evaluating
as an aggressive, impulsive, sensation-seeking factor. That to
some
extent matches up with Buss and Plomin’s Impulsivity, and may be the
opposite
of Big Five’s Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.

Buss and Plomin’s theory fits best with Sheldon’s:
Cerebrotonics
are Emotional (and not Sociable), Somatotonics are Active (and not
Emotional),
and Viscerotonics are Sociable (and not Active). In other words,
the factors of these two models are “rotated” slightly from each other!

Cattell’s factors, other than Exvia and Anxiety, are a little harder
to place. Discreteness looks a little like Agreeableness, and
Corteria
a bit like the opposite of Agreeableness; Good Upbringing looks
like
Conscientiousness; Independence, perhaps with Intelligence, looks
a little bit like Culture. Subjectivity, Corteria, and
Independence
together might be similar to Eysenck’s Psychoticism.

Mehrabian’s PAD factors are a little tougher to line up with the
others,
which makes sense considering the different theoretical roots.
But
we can see that Arousability is a lot like Neuroticism / Emotionality
and
that Dominance is a lot like Extraversion / Sociability. Pleasure
seems related to Extraversion plus non-Neuroticism.

We can also look at Jung and the Myers-Briggs test:
Extraversion
and Introversion are obvious. Feeling (vs. Thinking) sounds a bit
like Agreeableness. Judging (vs. Perceiving) sounds like
Conscientiousness.
And Intuiting (vs. Sensing) sounds a little like
Openness/Culture. It
helps
to recall that Jung saw these types and functions as essentially
genetic
-- i.e. temperaments!

Bibliography

I can only give you places to start investigating these various
theories.
For Sheldon, see The Varieties of Temperament (1942) and
Kretschmer's
earlier Physique and Character (1925). For Cattell, see The
Handbook for the 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire (1970, with
Ebert
and Tatsuoka). Buss and Plomin's Work is best summarized in
Buss's
text book, Personality: Temperament, Social Behavior, and the Self.
For Norman, go to Norman’s "Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality
attributes” in The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
(1966,
pp. 574-583). For McCrae and Costa, see Personality in
Adulthood
(1990) as well as an entire issue of The Journal of Personality
devoted to the research (#60, 1992). And for Mehrabian, go to his
web site at www.ablecom.net/users/kaaj/psych/.
Also, see William Revelle's summaries at http://fas.psych.nwu.edu/perproj/theory/big5.table.html
and http://fas.psych.nwu.edu/perproj/theory/big3.table.html.